toys and licensing

Being at the Myachi headquarters makes it pretty hard to stay out of the toy area.  Many of the things that Myachi does also applies to music - licensing agreements, in particular.  Myachi has international suppliers, and they are trying to break into the market in Turkey.  The interesting thing is that what David plans on using is the licensing agreement format for the venture, so it will be interesting to see how it applies outside of publishing.

David's been pretty helpful in drawing out charts and visual representations on how we're tackling certain things - for example, how the rights work with publishing vs. a label (aka knowing how much we own - the work I did a couple days ago).

Today I finished up my "internal audit" of our deposits and database filings that Chuks did.  We'll send them back to Chuks and he'll send it back by morning so I can see where our discrepancies are.

freelancer.com

David's guy, Chuks, is someone who he found on freelancer.com.  This site is a useful tool for different categories, not just for accounting and data entry.  You put up a project that you need done, and potential works "bid" on them on how much they are willing to accept for the work.  You have the choice to set how much you're willing to pay, and also choosing which person you want to do the job - it's not based on the highest/lowest offer.  It can be based on their rating (stars), resume, price, etc. 

From yesterday's work, there were about 40 songs that didn't have any information on who owned what, who the artist was, or anything.  Skimming the royalty receipts don't help because these songs are the ones played internationally and are lacking an ID to search on the website.  Speaking of websites, Universal Music Group gives the run around on their royalties collection site.  Very barebones, and only useful if you are lacking a payment and need to contact them.  ASCAP's not bad, but I think they can expand their search options (advanced features, etc.). 

More cataloguing

I'm so ready to be done with this project, it seems to go in circles!  Today I focused on finalizing the song list (Cold Chillin'/Songs of Marl) that I set aside last week.  We were still missing artists, percentage of ownership, etc.  I had to go through and correct my work from the previous week.  There are 3 columns of the work that I dealt with today: % CAK owns, Cold Chillin' (CC), and Songs of Marl (MM).  The catalogs show the percentage that the label owns, so for example, if "XXX" song is owned by both CC and MM, then CAK owns 100%.  This time around though, I had to label how much CAK owns, and then on the CC and MM side, it would be the percentage that CAK needs to pay out.  So using the above example, CC and MM each own 50% (subsequently, that means CAK owns 100%), so they would each get 50% of the royalties (less our administrative fees and commission). 

So this is showing me how CAK, as a publisher, collects the royalties directly from the client (whoever is licensing the rights to the song - mechanical or song rights), and distributes the funds out to the artist they represent.  David says he has a pretty good idea how much will come in, and so he will pay the artists ahead of time and when the checks come in, he pays out the remainder.  Typically, he pays semi-annually (twice a year), so in the first half (Jan-June), they should expect their checks by August.

Cataloguing

I'm still working on the same excel sheet as previously.  Today my assignment was to check the songs of the Cold Chillin'/Songs of Marl catalogs against Chuks' work of calculating how much we get from clients as royalties.  Chuks is the guy in Nigeria that David outsourced to do his accounting for CAK.  So if a song on the song split list didn't have an artist listed for whatever reason, I went through and did a search in Chuks' file for the song.  The same row would have who the client was (aka who we were collecting royalties from).  If it was EMI, we knew it was Marley Marl's label, and if it said ASCAP, Universal, etc., I had to go through our files we made and check against the statements for the song.  ASCAP has "song ID #s" for each of the entries on a royalty statement (if it was collected in the States; if not, good luck finding the song info).  I would use the song ID (if listed) to search for the song on the ASCAP database, and find the artist if listed.  If not, then I had to do a song search by title and do the same deal. 

Diversifying

I think what's great about David and his work is that he's the epitome of "diversifying."  You know how brokers and financial people say that you need to "diversify" your portfolio in order to reduce your risk?  Well, I think David's a prime example: he has CAK - the music side and the consulting side to S Factor, Myachi, and then he's got his clients through his time as an entertainment lawyer.  In terms of his time, he's spread pretty thin and has to be organized in order to keep up with everything.  However, as business professional, these different endeavors give him a wide scope of experience and make him more attractive as someone to hire. 

There hasn't been very much for me to work on today besides getting the rest of the files finished and put away.  On Monday we're going to start with the song lists again and go from there.

Royalties and their calculation

It seems like all I do these days is work in Excel.  David gave me an excel sheet that should line up with our deposits up to day.  My job is essentially to do an internal audit of our holdings.  The excel sheet is a running tally with our clients (the companies licensing rights from us), the song, play counts, and the amount that we should have received for the play.  David outsources to a guy who keeps track of all of this and sends him the info (monthly?).

CAK Entertainment vs. CAK Music/Music Publishing

Today was focused on following up with what I did yesterday.  I spent the majority of the day going through and organizing all of our royalties, licensing agreements, and synchronization contracts from 2007 through 2010.  Mostly it was to get it ready to file away, but doing this allowed me to see how the business has progressed over the years.  I learned that there are two business entities: CAK Entertainment and CAK Music/Music Publishing.  CAK Entertainment was a joint-venture between a financial firm and Charles A. Koppelman, but has since been bought out by their partners.  Now the only artists under the "CAK Entertainment" portion are Michael Tolcher and Susie Suh.  Michael Tolcher can be described as having a blend of Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz-ish music.  Susie Suh is a Korean-American singer/songwriter.  The rest of the music and artists are under CAK Music/Music Publishing.  I even came across a contract between CAK and Michael Jackson!